the ultimate taboo

»The real truths are heresies.
They cannot be spoken.
Only discovered, whispered, and perhaps read.«
Naval Ravikant

Do you believe that »knowledge is power«? It makes you powerless more often than you think.

Do you believe that information is basically good and useful? That is also a mistake.

There is nothing mysterious about disinformation, it is everywhere. The phenomenon of (Qualitative or) Passive Disinformation is a particularly fascinating form with far-reaching consequences: those affected (and there is hardly anyone who would not be in one way or another) are not aware of this weakness.

It is therefore a starting point for the simplest and at the same time most effective form of exercising power: if you do not notice an influence, you cannot take any countermeasures.

This phenomenon is radically simple and remains so as long as you don’t deviate from the basics. Radical simplicity is actually also the necessary precondition for treating it effectively.

It is relatively easy to understand, but to exploit it in others is ethically very questionable. So prepare yourself for the mother of taboos.

On the one hand, the publication of The Ultimate Taboo also breaks it (at least if you’ve read and understood it).
Then again, withholding it from others would protect harmful information asymmetries (and information suppression no longer really suits the Internet age, anyway).

Hence not everyone will be happy about this book.

But are critics of such publications really well-intentioned, or do they just want to protect their own exploitable playgrounds? So the issue is kind of disruptive, at least from such perspectives.

Anyway, I want to make your first contact with the topic as simple as possible: This book gives you an easy and hopefully highly entertaining approach to a very sensitive subject. Numerous examples illustrate the most significant, yet best hidden weakness of human thinking. If you know it, you can easily use it.

The stylistic device of literal quotations was deliberately used: It serves to clearly distinguish my own work from that of others. My selection criteria were – besides easy comprehensibility – above all conciseness, entertainment value and originality of the sources used.
However, I cannot guarantee the latter: the authors quoted do not necessarily have to be the first originators of the respective idea (malicious tongues claim that the history of science is above all the history of intellectual theft; quite a few publications consist almost exclusively of veiled quotations).
Although, the literal reproduction is not only intended to acknowledge the work of others, but also to point out its limitations.

Even if you already know some of the examples cited: don’t miss the forest for the trees.

Enjoy the reading!